Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now
by tjic on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @06:18PM
(#4811906)
> as they are already on a tight budget
They are NOT on a tight budget - even with the entire shuttle fleet shut down, they're spending more than they have in all but a few years since 1970.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
$17 BILLION may not sound like much in the insane scale of other federal spending, but it's a vast amount by any other scale.
The 'results' from missions are stories such as this one and other discoveries.
It is in NASA's interest to overplay and overvalue the importance of discoveries from each of these missions.
It is sad that NASA has to play this game, since discovering nothing with Mars Pathfinder would be just as interesting to science as discovering something, but it wouldn't make the mission easy to justify the next time they go and ask for a billion dollars.